STILL DEWS OF QUIETNESS

 A REFLECTION FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The lawyer in today’s Gospel is a foolish man.  Like many lawyers, he is impressed by his own knowledge.  All those years of training, memorizing the minutiae of the legal code from the Talmud, figuring out the loopholes that allowed them to get round God’s commandments when it suited them, applying the full force of the letter of the law to the people they didn’t like.  Oh, they were so very, very clever.  When some “upstart” from the wilds of Galilee shows up and starts healing people on the sabbath, obviously this lawyer just had to put him in his place by making a fool out of him.

 

Of course, our blessed Lord was more than a match for this arrogant and Pharisaical lawyer.  If anyone ended up looking foolish after their conversation, it was definitely the attorney who had lost sight of the spirit of the law he thought he knew so well.

 

We Catholics must avoid the same trap.  Our life here on earth is not about knowing the intricacies of the Ten Commandments.  It’s about loving God and our neighbor.  If we do this, all the lesser laws fall into place.  We cannot love God by worshiping false idols like Pachamama, by taking his Name in vain or failing to observe our Sunday obligations.  We surely can’t love our neighbor if at the same time we’re stealing from him, doing harm to him or his reputation, wishing him evil.  And as usual, by following our own self-interested inclinations, we find nothing but trouble.  With our first mortal sin, our soul enters a whirlpool, which sucks us further and further in until we can no longer escape without a special grace from God.  Let’s never presume that God will give us that grace, by the way!

 

Whenever we’re tempted, our choice is not just between good and evil.  It’s the choice between inner peace and the mayhem that we let loose within us.  No natural desire or achievement can ever truly satisfy us, for we are supernatural beings with an immortal soul.  To find peace, we must find God.  And God is to be found, not in the earthquake, the whirlwind and the fire, but in the still, small voice of calm.  By ordering our lives according to the two great commandments of loving God and our neighbor, we will surely find this peace.

 

I hope the words of today’s hymn by John Whittier will be a worthwhile source of meditation on this subject, as we consider this week the beauty of God’s peace that can be ours  if only we truly follow the commandments—the two big ones!